Keys To A Successful Book Launch

0:00If you're like, I don't want a book. I've never thought I could write a book. I don't need a book. Please listen and watch because you really will benefit whatever you do by having a book. You can either have a book that is about the thing that you do or want to sell. So if you sell horseback riding lessons, or if you sell musical equipment, whatever those things are, or even troll dolls, there are books that you can right because there's a huge audience out there that wants to learn more. So it's just a great form of content marketing. How much more successful would you be if you had lunch once a week with insanely successful entrepreneurs who shared their biggest secrets on how they think and achieve success?

0:47Grab your seat at the table because this is Business Lunch with Roland Frazier and Ryan Dice.

0:55Welcome to another episode of Business Lunch. And today's a snackable episode with Roland where he's going to get into some more tactical strategies that you can start using to live a rich and happy life. If this is the first snackable episode you're hearing, I'd encourage you to go back and listen to some of the other episodes that Roland has put out. And if you want to get notified every time we release a new episode, go to the new businesslunchpodcast.com website, and we'll send you detailed notes along with every episode. That's businesslunchpodcast.com, www.businesslunchpodcast.com, and you can sign up for the free email newsletter where you'll be able to get all the highlights and resources from the episodes.

1:30Hey, everybody. Roland Frazier and Ryan Dice here with another episode of the Business Lunch Podcast. Welcome to the show. Ryan, welcome. How are you doing today? I'm doing really, really well, and I want to find out how your book launch went. and I want to talk about book launches because I think we've got we talked about books in some previous episodes and how if you don't have a book you should have a book and things like that so I think it'd be fun to talk about how do you launch a book because you just did one I've got one coming up yeah I'm kind of going to take a different approach not like for spite or anything like that just because I want to I've got kind of some some different ideas that I think it'd be fun to kick around, but I would just love to hear like how the book launch go.

2:12What was the book? What would you do differently? What worked stuff like that? I'm going to see if I can get a copy. Uh, I know I've got some sitting on the, uh, uh, this is for the people in the room. I know I've got some sitting in the other room where my little purchase, where I, where I do things from, but, um, yeah, I think let's talk really briefly just so for any of you guys that don't want to go back and listen. Both of us believe that it is very, very helpful, whatever you do. So if you're like, I don't want a book, I've never thought I could write a book, I don't need a book, please listen and watch because you really will benefit whatever you do by having a book.

2:51You can either have a book that is about the thing that you do or want to sell. So if you sell horseback riding lessons or if you sell musical equipment, whatever those things are, or even troll dolls. There are books that you can write because there's a huge audience out there that wants to learn more. So it's just a great form of content marketing. And so with some of the tools that are available now too, you can write in multiple languages. So we've got books that we've written in different languages for different markets that we don't know anything about using AI. You can hire ghostwriters.

3:32There's a lot of ways to do it. This thing though is for everyone. So that I want to be the very first thing, thank you very much, that I want to talk about. And then the other reason to do it, so that would be basically something about the content around the product or service that you sell so that you become an authority, you inform more people, you are the natural solution and problem aware answer to whatever it is that they've got. The other reason to do it would be for personal branding, because both Ryan and I talked in, I think an episode or two ago about the importance of personal brands and how you having a personal brand will only help your business and everything else that you do as you go forward, as well as kind of insulate you against, maybe there's a downturn, something happens to your business.

4:20Maybe you decide to sell it or exit it. So please watch and listen for that purposes, for that purpose or those purposes. And this is the monolith of book, 448 pages worth that I like setting it down that Jay Abraham and I wrote called business wealth without risk that we recently launched. And so that's just kind of bringing you guys up to speed. Do you want to ask me some questions and we'll go through that way or what's your plan? Yeah. I mean, so I'd love for you to describe, cause you did a, you did a full scale launch on this. It's not like, cause for all the reason we talked about before, why somebody would want to have a book, there's lots of good reasons to have a book, even if a lot of people don't buy the book.

5:00Yeah. Right. I mean, we have a good friend, Jonathan Kronstadt. He's written a book with a ghost writer and is not releasing it at all. He's just sending it to people that he wants to do deals with. So very, very small distribution. There's what you're doing, which I'd like for you to share. And then there's the full blown launch method. Yeah. So I want to hear if you could kind of set up, like, what was the strategy behind the launch? Because the goal, if I'm not mistaken, was to hit some bestseller lists and to sell a lot of copies of the book. So if you could kind of describe, like, what was the strategy behind it?

5:32And then I'd love to know just like what worked and what are the things we were like, I don't know if we would necessarily do it that way again next time. Yeah. Yeah. Great, great questions. I, so our primary reason for writing the book was, and I think it's really good to focus on what do you want? And you say, well, I want to sell lots a copy of these books. Okay. Why, you know, go through that five whys. But at the end of the day, what, what, what Ryan and I are doing and what, uh, Jay and Ryan and I are doing in different partnerships and Damon, John as well. Everything that I am focused on right now is to get deal flow.

6:07I'm looking for companies that have a million dollars or more in EBITDA, uh, have been around a couple of years, have a good growth rate and a healthy margin of 15 % or more, five or more employees and I want to acquire them either for money or for helping them to grow and scale and exit or some combination of the two. And so that's my primary purpose in writing the book. Neither Ryan nor I, I think, or any of our business partners want to be famous. We all like the rich part. We're not crazy about the fame part, but the personal brand is a way to get that. And so this book was written primarily to not to sell copies or to sell copies, but only towards the end of let's get deals.

6:52And so we decided to, to take both the things that Jay is really good at and, and, and the things that I'm really good at and come together. And so let's talk about first, why did I choose to partner with Jay? Why didn't Ryan and I do this book? Because we have lots of growth strategies. And this book is really divided into three sections. How can I acquire businesses for growth or the addition of capability? Or in part one, part two is using all of Jay Abraham's growth and scale strategies. And then part three is how to exit. So one and three are primarily just me. Two is primarily Jay's stuff, even though I have a lot of growth stuff as well.

7:37So why did I do that? I did that because through Jay, I have some relationships with some of the people that that Jay does. But Jay's been around for a lot longer and has done a tremendous job of building his brand. And so Jay with Tony Robbins, for example, was able to have the book distributed to Tony Robbins Platinum Group. He was able to, it was Jay, not me, that has the intro to the book is written by Tony Robbins, like a nine page, I think, thing from Tony talking about the book and us and why this is great. And same thing with Damon John and a couple others. Damon is a partner of ours, so we would have gotten him.

8:18Um, but really I thought that partnering with somebody who had a reach into different businesses and companies that had been around a lot longer than I have, uh, and quite frankly, is significantly older than me. I'm just kidding. Uh, that, that, that was a really good strategy. And so you guys could think about that too. I talk all the time about centers of influence. I am a huge fan of tapping into existing momentum that other people have. So that's thing number one was that I want to partner. Number two was what is our outcome? And while I liked selling copies, it was really how do we get deals?

8:56So this book is all focused throughout the entire book about if you would like to do deals with us. This is all this great stuff to help you and you can do all this stuff. But if you meet these criteria and would like for us to, you know, would like to work with you or potentially invest in you, then come to this website. So there's a whole website built behind in this entire book is really a strategy with QR codes all over that take you to resources that all drive to work with us. They're all giving value throughout, but it's all working with us. So can I just interject real quick? Yeah, and I don't want to ramble too much.

9:38I have things I want you to ask, so I'll let you go through. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that's an important point that you made is you were clear on who you wanted to read this book. And that's not everybody. So the goal for the book doesn't necessarily have to be for it to become a bestseller. Because almost by definition, for it to become a bestseller, you need to write a book. You need to write a book that appeals to the masses. In this case, we don't want the masses. And you and I have both known people who their goal was to write a bestselling book. They achieved it. And none of those people turned into long term customers and clients.

10:11Yeah. Even lots and lots of readers. Yeah. Yeah. Being very, very intentional about who you want. Not that, I mean, look, if it can become a bestseller and it catches them, then great, but you don't, unless you're, unless your goal is to be a bestselling author, which I think is largely overrated. Almost anybody can call themselves that you rank in one category in Amazon for two and a half seconds and you're calling yourself a bestselling author. So I think it's watered down. But unless that is your goal, your goal should be to get the kind of readers that you can do business with if that's the purpose of the book.

10:45And that was the case here. So I think that's really, really important. It is. And when we're talking about bestsellers, too, to me, it's, again, if you're asking why, you'll get to the good answer. I want to have a bestseller. Why? So I can reach the largest number of people. Why? So that I can have more people find out about me and the content I've got. Why? so I can do deals with them, right? So like knowing that end why is really important. And if it's just, I wanna be famous and well, and have my name on the tongues of lots of people, that's cool, just know that, right? And we were able to hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list and we were in the top 200 business books on Amazon.

11:29We were the number one in the business category and the business motivation category and the startups category. So like during our launch week, when we have this giant focused effort and we sold about 10 ,000 copies of the book during that time. And, you know, and that got us that got us there, whether the book catches fire or not, you know, who knows? But if nothing else, now our next step in the campaign, and I think we should talk about why we do or don't use publishers to the next step in the campaign is to send physical copies of the book between 500 and a thousand copies a month to people who meet our acquisition criteria that we can identify, like acquisition to do deals, which we can identify using services like ZoomInfo, DataAxel, et cetera.

12:20So you know why you're writing the book. Part of that why I could introduce, does it make sense for me to invite a co-author into this to be able to tap into their audience. And to your point, like, you know, you and I could have easily coauthored this book. I've got gross stuff. You got gross stuff. It could have been, you know, my name on there instead of Jay Abraham, but Jay's got, you and I know the same people. So you and I coauthoring a book doesn't, I mean, it may get us new content, but it doesn't get us a bigger reach. So I'm happy. Screw me, put Jay in there. Right. Cause you know, we just want, we just want the deal flow.

12:54And so again, that speaks to the same about ego. It's about understanding the purpose of it, which for this book, you know, for us is, you know, is deal flow. So we've got our purpose that's going to inform the hook and the partners and the content, because we're going to make sure we're talking to our ideal person, not trying to, you know, talk to everybody, but then we got to get the word out there. So run me through the launch process and kind of your overarching strategy behind it. What was the timeline? Just kind of give me a break, a rundown of that. Yeah. So, so the funny thing for you guys is that Ryan and I both were advisors for it and had an ownership interest in a company called Scribe that wrote books for people.

13:35And then they, I think kind of almost went out of business, but are now back. I'm not sure where it is. I know that, that we were both, we both basically said, you know, you guys, you know, keep, keep, keep everything. We're not, you know, it's, it's not, it's not something that, that we ultimately wanted to continue to be involved. in. And, um, that was five years ago. I paid them 40 some thousand dollars to ghost, right? Launch audio book, everything. Um, and many, many people and including New York times bestsellers, uh, use that service and had great experience with it. Um, my experience was that I was too too difficult in some way for them to be able to do, even though I thought what would be easy would be exactly what we did for what we did for, uh, for this book called zero down, which is now in a, in a, it's second edition rewrite, um, was just recorded a event that I did and then sent the transcriptions for that event off to an editor and said, please make me a book.

14:50And now we've sold thousands and thousands of copies of that. That's a super fast way to do a book that is actually yours with your content and everything. And I was able to do that, but for some reason, that was about three years after we retained this company. And I'm telling you this because if you're thinking about having somebody come, it's not that they can just instantly make the book appear. You actually have to work with them to do that. And if you're really busy, like Ryan and I are, and most of you probably are, it might or might not be the way for you to go. So, um, so that was a tough experience.

15:26I thought they actually said, can we come out to one of your events? And I'm like, yeah, that's got all the content in it. And they came and then never could get it written. Like, and it just never happened. And I, they gave me multiple people to work with. And I'm like, here's all the stuff. Here's the event recordings. Here's everything. Couldn't do it. So that was really, really frustrating. And I'm getting to the point. So getting the book done itself took about four years or five between the time that I said I would like to do this and when it happened. About two years ago, Jay and I were talking about the possibility of doing something like this.

16:06And we hired a ghostwriter that he had used multiple times before. Not a big company, just a single person. And we did a book, Ryan and I, with William Shatner several years ago, where we hired a ghostwriter. So we've got good experience with, I think, solo ghostwriters versus like a big mill that's going to churn out books. The experience was great. I want to say we spent like$15 ,000 or so on the ghostwriter. And then we spent another few thousand dollars to get the kinds of examples that were out in the market that, that were maybe bigger, more famous examples of what we were doing with our customers so that we had, you know, let's, let's give examples from Apple and Uber and Tesla and things like that, in addition to the companies that we had worked with.

16:53So then we get all that done and we're the, the edits are done. Well, the, the, the first version of the book is done. We are clear that throughout it, we want to pepper the opportunity to work with us. That's going to be at the beginning, at the end, and every chapter at the end. And then it was, okay, well, how do we get this thing out into the market? So we hired a, we interviewed several firms that specialized in book launches and we hired, we hired one. I don't remember the name of but I know the guy's name was Rob. And I think there was a Bob and a Rob. So it might've be the Rob Bob agents.

17:32But we hired them because they had launched several books before. And I think they had launched like Ed Milet and Tony Robbins and a couple of others. So I was like, okay, well, there's a track record of somebody that knows how to do this. They also guaranteed, easy to guarantee this, Amazon bestseller, but they also guaranteed that they would work with arranging the sales platform so that you would get credit for sales of the book as well. And then they would help with the marketing strategy and ads and things like that to generate demand. And that was in the neighborhood of, I think it was$65 ,000.

18:08So not an inexpensive service to get, but again, pretty good investment given that one deal could pay us$2,$3 million a year. So that was our strategy in terms of having kind of a helper to do it because we don't know how books get, you know, book scan or whatever the thing is that records sales works and all that. Um, and I don't know, I know we did end up, uh, in the top 10 or the top five, I think actually on the wall street journal bestsellers list, which is good. And that'll be printed on the book, not because that makes us money, but because people go, Oh, it's on the wall street journal.

18:42It must be good. We did not opt to go through a publisher because as Ryan and, and most book marketers know the, the retail cost, like the cost from a publisher to buy this, I'm going to guess it's over 10 bucks a book for a, it's probably 14 now. Yeah. Probably like$14. I think we did a, we did digital marketing for dummies through Wiley and our wholesale cost. If we want to buy the book to use in marketing is only about always what the discounted retail price on Amazon is like, There's lots of times when we can actually buy our book when it's on sale, retail from Amazon, and buying it direct from the publisher.

19:21Yeah. And think about like we quoted also, and like I said, this is a 448 page book. This book, I want to say cost us a little over six bucks to buy from Amazon with the author discount. You don't get credit for that, by the way. So I'm not like, I can't buy a thousand copies and get credit for having sold a thousand copies. but what I can do is I can afford$6 for a copy of the book, a thousand of them a month going out to the people that we want, cost me 6 ,000 bucks a month plus shipping. That's not bad, right? So if I, will I spend$10 ,000 a month to send this talisman of, you know, of our brilliance and knowledge, hopefully, to people that we absolutely want to connect with?

20:01Yeah, that's a great use of the money. One thing though that you mentioned, Ryan, that I think is worth also thinking about in the partnership, like I was talking about why I partnered with Jay, why you partnered with the dummies people, with Wiley and dummies was because you got a whole additional market of people that were dummies fans, right? You were tagging on to the center of influence that is the dummies brand. Yeah, it was the same kind of thing. And I think it goes to what's the purpose of the book. In that case, we wanted to, a digital marketer, own digital marketing as a term. And so what are all the different places you can own it.

20:36Well, owning it from a For Dummies book, given that that is an established brand made sense. And so we didn't do it to make money. We didn't even do it to generate customers. It was purely a brand play that, you know, it doesn't really call it when you go. The nice thing about going through a publisher is they're absorbing most, if not all the costs. And in some cases you're even getting paid an advance against your royalties. So it can, you can make some money. So it goes to the, goes to the reason there, but there was no real, and there's no incentive for us to go out there and promote and sell the book ourselves.

21:07It's not this talisman that we can send around. I mean, but from a brand perspective, I can say I'm the author of that book and that helps with speaking engagements and things like that. So it does go to a purpose. I like my work on digital marketing. That's pretty sexy. Yeah, exactly. So going back to though, I want to know, like, how did you launch the book? What was the process for launching it? Okay. So then the next step, we have now the people that specialize in that. We had another gentleman that helps people with that who just volunteered to help us. His name is Trevor Crane. So I want to shout him out here because you know Trevor.

21:41Trevor Crane, mastermind member. Yeah. And so he helped quite a bit in terms of the editing and a lot of the process stuff. And then we reached out to every affiliate that we could think of. So who's going to promote for the book. So Tony agreed to give it to his plats. We have not yet been able to get him to do a wide promotion. I don't know that we ever will, because if we manage to partner with him, which is something we would hope to do, then I imagine we can do that. Russell Brunson at one point offered to promote the book. I don't think that ended up ever happening. It may have. Russell, if you did, I'm grateful and I apologize for not being informed by Jay that you did it.

22:24But we did go through, Jay and I both went through our list of everybody that we knew who we thought had an audience that might promote. We ended up with our whittled down list. I want to say it was 273 affiliates that agreed to promote the book that had audiences, John Asteroff and a lot of people that were friends of ours that had decent sized audiences. and we had people that had big audiences that wanted to simply buy copies of the book for their audience. So like Steve Harward bought 500 copies to give to people that he knew over at Prime Corporate Services and that was helpful as well. So we're looking for who's got an audience that they might wanna buy a lot of copies of the book for and we reached out to those people with email, phone and text campaigns to get them on board.

23:16then we looked for who has audiences that would be willing to promote the book, not that they're going to buy it and give it to them, but they're going to promote. And we ended up with, like I said, 270 odd people that were willing to do that. We then reached out to all them. I want to say 73 of them ended up actually promoting. So of the 270 some, a couple hundred people had good intentions, but you know, life gets in the way, calendars get in the way, and maybe they will later, but for launch week, because you're only concerned from a bestseller standpoint about launch week, that's when you want to concentrate the sales of as many copies as possible.

23:57So that was really the book launch people, the affiliates that we had, and then everything driving to an event that Jay and I would appear at live to announce the book and really sell it on the event. And so that, that event we hosted, we quoted around, um, several different people. We talked to, uh, Eric Worre gave us a friends and family, his big, I think 20 or$40 million studio. And several other people did ultimately, uh, one of the businesses that we own an interest in called Everbowl with Jeff Fenster offered us their really fancy studio with remote cameras and all that kind of stuff for free.

24:42And, um, and it was in San Diego. So it was easy. Jay drove down from, uh, his beach house an hour North of here. I drove 20 minutes from my house, our team, my son and Matt and, uh, Matt and my son were already here. And Deanna came in from, uh, from Austin, but she was actually already here for an event anyway. So that was the strategy was how many people do we know that will buy lots of books? How many people do we know that will promote the book to their audience, but in the form of let's get them to this event, because we wanted to build an email list. We ultimately had, I want to say it was like 85 or 8 ,800, just under 9 ,000 people that registered for this launch event, which was a 90 minute presentation by me and Jay about really the stuff that's in the book.

25:29We built up a huge value by creating several videos that people who buy the book could scan the QR code that's on the back and throughout the book to go in and get enhanced content so that they could get video content, worksheets that were in the book and all that kind of stuff completely for free. So I would say probably three to$5 ,000 worth of what we would normally sell stuff for that we just made available free to anybody that has the QR code. And if they don't buy the book, so the theory is they buy the book to get the QR code. And the only way to get into the bonus stuff is to have bought the book and have the QR code.

26:10Obviously people share and cheat and find it and that's okay. We don't care about any of that stuff. It's not gated because we wanted as many people to come in. You don't have to give your email because we didn't want fake emails. We do pixel people who visit the pages so that we're building audiences and lookalike audiences of the people who are interested in the book. And I was trying to think if there was anything else that we did. Obviously, we promoted to our list as well. Go ahead. You got muted, Ryan.